In the grand scheme of things, a company blog might not seem like it’s a big deal. After all, there are more than 152 million blogs in the world, what difference can one more make? But in reality, a blog can be a fantastic forum for thought leadership. It can also help foster brand loyalty among your followers, and can even bolster your lead generation efforts.
60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content on its site. (Content Plus)
Regardless of whether you are just starting up a company blog, or have had a blogging program in place for years, you probably still ponder one of the following questions: what’s the best time of day to post my content? Which days of the week do the best in terms of engagement?
TrackMaven recently conducted an extensive amount of research to get to the bottom of these questions. The company analyzed 4,618 blogs totaling 1,167,426 posts and 1,915,428,305 social shares. Their research unearthed the following blogging trends:
What’s the relationship between the day of the week that content is posted, and how many social shares the content gets?
A great question, and the answer is probably not what you would expect. First, let’s look at the days of the week in order of the average posting frequency:
- Tuesday & Wednesday: 18% of all posts published
- Thursday : 17.9%
- Monday: 17.2%
- Friday: 15.9%
- Sunday: 6.8%
- Saturday: 6.3%
Next, a look at the days of the week in order of average social shares:
- Saturday: 18% of all social shares
- Sunday: 14.6%
- Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday:14.1%
- Friday: 12.7%
- Monday: 12.5%
You’ll notice by looking at the breakdown that only 6.3% of posts were published on Saturdays, but that these posts received 18% of the total social shares. This may seem counterintuitive for those of us who have always posted during business hours for an audience that generally works a 9AM – 6PM day. It’s likely that we can attribute this trend to the level of noise during the workweek. The quantity of content is so high that it’s difficult for any particular post to make an impact. Keep this in mind as you write your next few blog posts. It might be time to consider trying out a weekend post to see how your audience reacts!
When is the best time of day to publish a blog post?
According to TrackMaven, there is a large influx of blog posts published within normal business hours (9AM – 6PM EST), with the highest number of posts being published between 11AM and 12PM (6.53%). There is a second spike in posts that occurs from 12-1AM (3.17%), which TrackMaven speculates is due to scheduled posts at the start of the next business day.
However, blog posts published between 9PM and midnight have the most social shares, with engagement levels peaking between 10PM and 11PM. This is another finding that turns traditional blogging tactics on their head — but when you think about it, it makes sense. Bloggers who are publishing content outside of business hours are able to more easily reach an audience of businesspeople who are reading blogs for leisure, outside of their normal work activities.
The takeaways from these findings? Don’t be afraid to publish your blog content on days of the week that aren’t quite the norm. The same applies to the times you publish. You never know, you may be able to tap into an entirely new audience just by experimenting with your publishing schedule!
For more data from TrackMaven, including optimum character counts and punctuation for blog titles, see their full white paper here.
If you’re interested in learning more about content marketing, feel free to download our Content Creation Guide, which provides a helpful editorial calendar to help you set a posting schedule that works for you.
